This year the Stockholm World Water Week will focus on Water Cooperation and Building Partnerships, in line with the 2013 UN designated International Year of Water Cooperation. Each year over 2500 experts and practitioners from the water sector and related industries gather at Water Week to discuss issues and solutions for the world's most urgent water resource challenges.

With an expected world population of more than 9 billion people by 2050, who depend on the same finite water resources as today, our inter-dependence increases every day. In designating 2013 as the International Year of Water Cooperation, the international community recognized that cooperation is essential to secure a balance between different needs and priorities, and share water resources equitably across borders. Promoting water cooperation implies an interdisciplinary approach bringing in scientific, political, legal, institutional and economic dimensions.

The conference programme will also focus on the Post 2015 Development Agenda whereby the achievements of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are reviewed and a process of developing a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is initiated. As an outcome of the Rio+20 conference, the concluding document clearly stated water as a key area for achieving sustainable development and thus an important part of the upcoming SGDs and post 2015 development framework.

IUCN, with its partners and Members, has been working through the BRIDGE (Building River Dialogue and Governance) project on improving water cooperation in over 10 basins worldwide and over the past year, has been heavily involved in the Post2015 Development work. Hence, IUCN Water will be very present and engaged in this year's World Water Week with organising seminars and side events, participating in workshops, launching new publications, as well as hosting a booth in the exhibition centre where our knowledge products will be promoted and disseminated.

A full programme of IUCN events is available for downloading from here.